


Flowers For Her

by AkiRah



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Flowers For Senna Quest, Gen, Spirit in the Lake Quest, Tiny Alistair, implied child abuse/neglect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 04:14:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11547273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkiRah/pseuds/AkiRah
Summary: Dragon Age one-shots inspired by flowers and other plants. The tags will be updated as I write more.





	1. Flowers For Senna

**Author's Note:**

> Separate Dragon Age Ficlets based around the premise "Flowers For Her." Tags will be updated as I write more. Feel free to send me prompts, actually.

First he left the flowers on my doorstep without a name or even a knock. Bluebells plucked from the Arlessa’s garden. I only knew they were from him because I’d told no one else how much I envied her the bluebells and the snapdragons and the little pink posies.

* * *

He tucked the embrium behind my ear the first time he worked up the courage to kiss me. A shy kiss on my cheek and his fingers laced in mine, tightening when I press my blushing smile to his and our teeth click together because we’re both grinning too hard to make a graceful show of our first kiss.

* * *

He wove the flowers into my wedding garland together himself, my mother told me as she set it on my head, secured with a pin. Her eyes teared up as she kissed my cheeks and whispered that my father would have been so proud with my choice.

_Sylaise enaste var aravel. Lama, ara las mir lath. Bellanaris._

* * *

“We could join the Dalish,” he tossed the dry flowers on the fire and filled the house with sweet smelling smoke. “If you wanted.” 

I looked down at my swollen belly and shook my head before kissing his temple. “We have a life here, vhenan,” I told him. “A good one.”

“You’re sure you don’t want more? Your father was Dalish.” 

“And now my father is dead,” I shrugged to keep the thought from stinging. “You’re a gardener, husband, you wouldn’t enjoy traveling that much.”

* * *

His hands shook until he braced them on the table and used his own weight to steady them. “They can’t _do_ this,” he growled. “They can’t just take her.” Tears splashed down his hooked nose to darken the wood. “She’s only a girl, Senna. She’s our girl.”

“The templars don’t know yet,” I told him, setting a hand on his back. “If we’re quick, they never will.”

I borrowed one of Master Dennett’s horses, feigning an emergency errand for my lady and rode all night with my daughter to ask Keeper Marethari to take her somewhere safe. The Dalish eschew having too many mages in a clan, but even a _chance_ at freedom was more then the templars would have given her.

I set my old, dry wedding garland on her head and asked her to promise to be good.

* * *

The flowers on the grave were white. _Felan’telban_ or _Andraste’s Grace_. Pure white petals save for their bloody red base. Our second child and only son buried before he ever took a breath. I held my husband’s hand and hoped my daughter was well while I mourned the baby I hadn’t known.

* * *

The flowers on the grave were white, except for the bluebells. He dug the grave himself at the top of the hill. Marethari’s clan had long departed and so he mourned alone. He set a staff at my side to scatter the ravens of fear and doubt and kissed my sallow cheeks as though the fever hadn’t left them discolored and grey.

* * *

The young man leaves bluebells on my grave and cleans the dirt from the stones that mark where I’ve been sleeping. He exhales a sad breath and prays for me in Elvhen, the words even and steady, not like my love and I had spoken. The prayer is different in some ways, but it’s also the same. He shakes out his left hand like it hurts him and promises that next year, it will be my husband bringing me flowers.

And I am content to wait.


	2. A Spirit Of Valor, Not Of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alistair is 10 years old when they send him to the monastery.

Girls in Redcliffe village offer flowers to the Lady in the Lake and ask for love. They sprinkle daisy petals on the water and screw their eyes up tight, fingers laced together while they pray with the fervor of Chantry sisters that he will notice them. That she will notice them. That some sweet stranger or some faithful friend will get that little loving light behind their eyes and choose her.

The boys in Redcliffe follow suit, but no one ever mentions it. They slip out of their rooms at night and sneak to the lakeside, bare feet scrambling over the rocks and ask that Molly or Mary or Petrice will give them a smile or sneak them a kiss. That Jack or Ryan or Fredrick will wink at them the next time they’re playing at being soldiers and they’ll know that they are loved. Secret little rituals of which all the youth partake.

Alistair is ten the first time he tries. The flower clutched in his hand isn’t the prettiest, but it’s what was closest when he wiped the tears off his ruddy cheeks. Perhaps, he hopes, flicking the thick black stem with his bitter little fingers, perhaps it doesn’t have to be love love. No one’s ever actually specified romance and the blood lotus he’s holding isn’t a pretty flower anyway. Not the sort of flower he’d give to a girl.

He screws his eyes shut tight and hopes and prays that in the morning, when he’s invited into the castle proper for his lessons with Arl Eamon, that Isolde will smile at him. That maybe she’ll brush her fingers against the bruise on his cheek the way the other boys mothers do and coo in her thick orlesian accent “my poor boy, what has happened to you?”

Isolde is not his mother.

His mother is ten years dead.

Arl Eamon is not his father.

His father is many miles away in Denerim with the son he can and will admit to.

Alistair swallows. He kisses the black base of his flower, and he hurls it into the lake. He counts to ten, long, slow breaths like Teagan taught him. He lets himself feel better and sniffs before he wipes his nose and his wet eyes and dries his hands on his pants. When he looks out at the lake, the flower is gone.

Flowers usually float, don’t they?

The path seems less dark on his walk back to the village, the wolves sound farther away. He holds his head high and his shoulders straight. And the next morning, when Eamon tells him that he is going to be sent to the Templars, Alistair is angry. He is hurt.

But he is not afraid.


End file.
